


the very touch of you corrupts

by irishais



Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 05:46:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29345343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irishais/pseuds/irishais
Summary: He's only in Garden because he doesn't want to go to prison. She's only babysitting him to earn back her instructor's license. Then, naturally, everything goes to hell. (Seifer/Quistis).
Relationships: Seifer Almasy/Quistis Trepe
Comments: 6
Kudos: 22





	the very touch of you corrupts

  
  


_Some say the world will end in fire,_

_Some say in ice._

_From what I’ve tasted of desire_

_I hold with those who favor fire._

- _Fire and Ice, Robert Frost_

All around him, the world burns, ash like snow falling from the sky, and he stands in the center of it all, reveling. 

_This_ is how it was always meant to be, _this_ is what he’s always wanted. Destruction. Glory. The world to _know him_ , to _fear him_. 

Funny, how the two concepts seem to always go hand in hand. 

Squall is in front of him now, brave in his terror-- Seifer must applaud him, it takes real balls to be scared to death and still come out swinging. But he’s too weak, he’s too _small_. 

The flame builds in his palms, the spell is unleashed, an inferno that sucks all the oxygen from the whole wide _world_ . Before him, below him, _beneath_ him, Squall burns, screaming, writhing, a hero thrown upon a pyre he’d never wanted, and should have expected all the same. Behind him, Rinoa, Quistis, Zell-- _now_ they’re afraid, _now_ they want to turn and run. 

Flames find them, chase them, consume them. 

Seifer throws his golden head back and _laughs and laughs and--_

\--

Upright in bed, abruptly, as if a gunshot has gone off next to his ear, sweat streaming down his brow and the yell dying on his lips. 

There are no noises from the other side of the wall, no SeeD jerked awake by his neighbor’s nightmares, and for that, Seifer is glad, once he manages to get his heart back under control, swallowing the scream back down in his lungs where it can stay until he really needs it. 

The thin blue blanket is damp when he yanks it away from his bare chest, casting it aside, onto the floor, out of bed to crank down the room’s thermostat to something more manageable (like _off_ , because Garden’s environmental controls have always been a joke, and one gets no choice in temperature between “boiled alive” and “frozen Trabian tundra.” Seifer will take the latter over the former _any_ day of the week-- at least he can produce his _own_ heat.)

The heating system kicks off with the turn of the dial. He throws open the lone bedroom window for good measure, shoving aside cheap plastic blinds to get at a latch that’s been accidentally painted shut one too many times between dormitory occupants; brute force makes it comply. 

He sticks his whole head and shoulders out of the frame when the gentle breeze drifting in off the sea doesn’t quite cut it, a tight enough squeeze that he gets a little concerned about getting stuck for real on too deep an exhale. But he is able to draw himself back in without issue. The window stays open. 

Maybe it’s while he’s been hanging half-outside that someone has knocked on his door, because he hears an insistent banging once he’s back in, a noise that can almost be called _annoyed_ , if one could ascribe such a descriptor to something like a knock. Seifer unlatches his bedroom door, stalks the fifty-ish feet from that door to the one being attacked, and presses the button to send it sliding open. 

“ _What,_ ” he demands of the unwanted guest-- can’t call her an _intruder_ , she lives here, too. Down the hall, even. That’s not gonna stop him from looming over her, glaring down at Quistis like she’s shown up right as he’s in the middle of something _important_. “It’s the middle of the night, Trepe. Fuck off.” 

She is not in the least fazed by his attitude; he can only take comfort in the fact that he’s interrupted her beauty sleep, since she’s in her pajamas, a matched set with-- _god._ One hand extends, forefinger and thumb curling in to meet each other, and Seifer lets go with a solid flick against her breast, just because he can. 

“Are those little _moogles_ on your shirt? Damn, and here I thought you were an _adult_. Did you steal those from some junior cadet’s laundry?” 

He'll give her credit; all she does is slap his hand away, a small flicker of anger sparking behind her glasses, gone almost as quickly as her expression schools itself back into neutrality.

“No, I did not. And I’m not going to _fuck off_ ; you know the drill. Cassidy reported shouting. I need to make sure you’re not doing anything illegal in here.” No mention of the idea that he might be in actual _danger_ \-- fat chance of that. Seifer’s not afraid of anyone, or any _thing_. 

He sneers at her, stepping aside to leave her barely enough room to fit through the door, and gestures grandly into the dark of his dorm room. “Be my guest.” 

“Thanks.” God, she sounds like she means it, even, squeezing past him into the room. Quistis finds the light switch, sending the whole place into brightness, a pathetic excuse for home in that every other room looks exactly like his. 

Seifer’s glad he’s never been one for mess, watching her open doors, flicking the switch on in the bathroom and shutting it off again. Last thing _he_ wants is for Quistis going through any of his stuff, pawing through his property like she’s entitled to it. 

Quistis reaches inside the open bedroom door, pausing for a second before she hits the switch. 

“You don’t have any other visitors I should be aware of?” 

“Think I’d tell _you_?” he snorts. Like anyone in Garden would deign to sleep with him after what he’s done, at least no one wearing a uniform. “Nope, just me and my right hand as of late, Trepe. Knock yourself out.” 

She hits the switch. The bedroom looks like a bedroom, the cover thrown on the floor, the blinds clacking lightly in the breeze. Hyperion’s case is the only thing out of place, set open on the floor with gray foam pulled out of it and dumped on his desk, a sharp utility knife in its ubiquitous orange plastic case set atop still inside one of the cutouts. Upgrades, if she must know. 

“You can’t have that,” she points out, picking up the knife and sliding the blade back down until it’s safe. Never mind the giant _gunblade_ at her feet. “It’s against your terms of parole.” 

“Hardly paroled, Trepe, with all of you in and out of here at your pleasure, going through all of my shit, and what the hell _else_ am I going to modify that case with? My teeth? A butter knife? You and I both know those terms are about as bullshit as the Garden Council could come up with.” 

He knows what she’s really getting at, though. 

“‘Sides, Hyperion’s a hell of a lot more effective if I were gonna stage a coup.” 

She rolls her eyes-- if Garden had satellites trained on them, they’d probably be able to pick up on her dismissal from _space_. But the knife is left on the cheap pressboard of the desktop; small victories. 

“Return it to whomever you _borrowed_ it from, then, once you’re finished.” 

Like his father will miss it, the knife nicked from Cid’s pencil cup when Seifer had been hanging around his office earlier that day, bored out of his skull. 

“Sure. Promise.” He mocks a salute at her, finishes with the middle finger at her back as she slides open his closet, looking for-- what, he doesn’t know. Just being a bitch about things, probably, as she’s prone to do. 

She’s apparently satisfied her curiosity a moment later, though, and turns back to face him. “So. Yelling. What was going on?” 

“Watching porn,” comes the flippant reply. “Lot of creative videos on the Network the Trepies made of you, Trepe-- didn’t know you were such a _screamer_.” 

Ah, yes. He’s made her cheeks turn pink, a frustrated blush she can’t control. Good. The Trepies are a weak spot in the Almighty Quistis Trepe’s armor, an _easy_ target, but one still fun to hit nonetheless. 

“Kidding. Mostly. You should really crack down on them, y’know.” 

“ _Seifer--_ ” 

He holds his hands up in mocking defense, and lets her have one straight answer-- if nothing else, it’ll hopefully pacify her enough to _go away_. 

“Okay, okay. I was _dreaming_ , if you must know. Don’t think it’s a crime to react to what my subconscious decides to play while I’m _asleep_.” 

“About?” 

“I’m not telling _you_.” 

He doesn’t have to, either. She’s not a court-mandated therapist, she’s not even his _Instructor_ anymore, much less his friend, and she can try to pull rank all she wants, but Seifer’s not a SeeD, so that means exactly _shit_ to him. 

“You happy? Satisfied you got to go through all my shit, or do you wanna look in my _fridge_ , too? Maybe rifle through my underwear or something while you’re at it?” 

Quistis sighs, exasperation in the exhalation, shoving some of her hair behind one ear as she glares up at him. There’s a fingerprint smudge on one lens of her glasses, he notices. “Could you, for just _one second_ , shut up and let people _do their jobs_? I was assigned to look after you, and that includes when I get reports of random _screams_ coming from your dorm at 0200, Seifer.” 

“What’re you gonna _do_? Put my _bad attitude_ in your report to dear old Dad? It’s not exactly a state secret, but if it makes you and that stick jammed up your ass happy, knock yourself out--” 

She wants to punch him. He can see it in the way the muscles in her arms tense, the way her fingers tighten around her phone. She _wants_ , so badly that she radiates it from every inch of her, to deck him-- and hell, maybe he wants her to do it. Maybe Seifer’s just itching for a _fight_ , a really good knock-down, drag-out brawl with someone who might actually be a relatively decent _match_ for him. God alone knows that Garden keeps sending him off on jobs that a first-year student could do unaided, wasting all of his skills, refined, honed at their hands, because Seifer on their leash is better than Seifer on anyone else’s, or _worse_ , off entirely. 

She’s working it over-- she’s considering her options. Seifer straightens himself up, drawing away from the door frame to get himself more grounded just in case. But then she opens her mouth instead of a good right hook, and he’s disappointed, he realizes. Just a little, but still. 

“You’re an _asshole_.” 

Seifer’s laugh is barking, brief. “Clever. You hurt that big brain of yours coming up with that one?” 

She shoves past him, and he locks the door behind her on the way out.

\--

_Asshole!_

She doesn’t regret saying it, because it’s _true_. Quistis tries not to swear, save for when it’s appropriate, but with Seifer Almasy, it seems like she could let loose an entire _litany_ of what she thought of him, and it would all be appropriate. 

_There isn’t enough room in all of Garden for him_ and _his ego_ , she thinks in frustration, stalking back down the hall to her dorm, punching in the key code, fingers hard enough against the keys that her knuckles whiten briefly with each press. The door opens, allowing her entry-- Quistis doesn’t wait for it to open all the way, just slides in and hits the override to shut it again, locking the rest of Garden _out_. 

Why did Squall _push_ so hard, for Seifer to not spend the rest of his life in a cage? Quistis had made her peace with that, the idea that the worst punishment they could inflict on him would be putting him in a small box and never letting him see the sun again. He would _deserve_ it, too, after everything he had done. 

Possessed or not, _crazy_ or not, the atrocities Seifer Almasy had waged were too monumental to simply sweep under the rug. 

So Squall had _fought_ , and argued, and enlisted the entirety of Garden’s legal team trying to find a loophole, and it had fallen all on Quistis’ shoulders, a redemption for her Instructorship being revoked so unceremoniously. If she could put him on a right path, make him see _reason_ , and work in _Garden’s_ best interests instead of his own, she could have her license back, she could _teach_ again. 

_It’s hardly worth it, if I have to deal with_ that _every minute of the day!_

Is it too late now to send a curt message to Squall and tell him just where exactly he can shove her Instructor’s license? 

She’s irritated, enough so that when she throws herself back down onto her bed, dragging her comforter up high over her shoulders, it’s _impossible_ to sleep, tossing and turning and scowling into her pillow until the alarm finally goes off. There isn’t enough coffee in the whole of the world to shake the weariness in her shoulders, but Quistis shoves herself through it, _past_ it. She’s a SeeD, and she’s survived on less. 

Recently, even. 

“Latte?” Xu asks, meeting her in the hall on the way to the lobby, shortly after Quistis has dragged herself from the semi-comfort of her bed, through a shower cold enough to burn, dressing in practical battlefield fatigues, clothes she doesn’t have to think about. 

She realizes Xu is still waiting for an answer, or at least an acceptance, one eyebrow up as she continues to hold out a paper go-cup that is still hot, steaming through the tiny hole in the plastic lid, a commonplace incongruity to the elaborate rifle that’s slung across her back.

Quistis doesn’t care about the gun; Xu’s coffee maker is a thing of wonder, imported from Galbadia and worth more than most people’s _cars._ She will never turn down coffee from her, even if this one she drains half of in two gulps. 

“You’re my hero.”

“You may want to retract that statement in about thirty seconds-- I had to revise the squad. Leonhart’s down with the goddamned _flu_.” 

She is more tired than she thinks-- it takes Quistis an extra few seconds to follow _that_ train of thought to its inevitable destination. 

“Oh. Oh, _no_ , Xu. No. No, no, no.” 

Xu nods sympathetically. “I know. I hate him, too, but he’s the only tank I could scrounge up on short notice with the practical experience.” She outpaces Quistis as they head through the security checkpoint, squeezing her shoulder on the way past. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ll shoot him if he steps out of line.” 

Quistis scowls into her latte. It’s a beautiful day, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and she’s got to put up with Seifer goddamned Almasy on a mission that’s already complicated enough without factoring him and his ego into the equation. 

He’s beaten them to the front gate, sunglasses on, leaning against the cement pillar with Hyperion’s case at his feet, looking completely at ease despite the fact that every single person in this school would kill him, given enough opportunity. 

Oh, to be at the head of _that_ particular line. Quistis finishes her coffee, the empty cup finding its mark in one of the discrete waste bins along their route. 

“I’d feel better if _I_ could do it.” 

She’d even deal with the _paperwork_ that would come after. With pleasure. 

  
  
  
  


  
  



End file.
